Mrs Elizabeth Smyth

Profile & Legacies Summary

???? - 1835

Slave-owner and antecedent of claimant or beneficiary

Biography

Absentee annuitant on Vauxhall estate in St Elizabeth Jamaica who died of Exeter, Devon c. 1835, and whose executors were awarded part of the compensation for the Vauxhall estate. Vauxhall had been mortgaged by Francis George Smyth the elder (almost certainly her husband) in the 1780s, although was in other ownership (Mitchell, Miller & Hinde) by 1811JA.

The will of Elizabeth Smyth widow of Exeter was proved 08/12/1835. It shows the Rev. John Pike Jones and John Dennis Burdon (the executors), and mentions her daughter Federata [sic] married to James Rodd and her grand-daughters Elizabeth Ann Smith and Emily Lavington Smyth. The witnesses at Federata Smyth's marriage to James Rodd at Topsham Devon on 13/06/1796 were given as as Elizabeth Smyth and Thomas Smyth.

Tentatively, Mrs Elizabeth Smyth has been identified as the widow of Francis George Smyth the elder and step-mother of Francis George Smyth the younger (q.v., the owner in the 1830s of the Goshen estate and father of Harriet Catherine Smyth, who m. Admiral Thomas Bladen Capell in 1816). Francis George Smyth the younger's will refers to the two children of his brother Thomas, Elizabeth and Emily: these are almost certainly the same children as those referred to in the will of Mrs Elizabeth Smyth as her grandchildren. Thomas Smyth is shown as in fact the half-brother of Francis George Smyth the younger in an on-line genealogy, which is consistent with the other evidence here.

Sources

T71/870 St Elizabeth no. 375A&B.

Elizabeth Smyth of Exeter PROB 11/1855/308. Emily Lavington Smyth is known to have married Arscott Miller Darke in Penzance in 1847; Parish of Topsham, Devon, Marriages Baptisms and Burials AD 1600 to 1837.